Blind Eye

49

They burst through into the building's stairwell. The sound of screaming trailed away as Logan dragged Wiktorja up the stairs. Now the only noise was the blood pounding in his ears, their feet hammering on the concrete steps, and the angry shouting outside. Oh God, the man he'd shot was dead. He'd killed someone. Or maybe the man had just passed out? Please dear God, let him have passed out.

One more storey to go and they were back at Gorzkiewicz's front door. Logan hammered on the plain wooden surface. There was music playing inside: something cheery and upbeat. Down below he could hear feet clattering up the stairs after them.

'GORZKIEWICZ, OPEN THE BLOODY DOOR!'

Nothing.

Footsteps getting closer.

Logan backed up to the banister, and slammed his foot into the wood, next to the lock. The frame burst as the deadbolt tore loose, but the chain still held firm. He kicked again and the chain ripped free in a shower of splinters.

He shoved Wiktorja into the darkened apartment, then turned and fired two shots at random down the stairwell. BOOOM! BOOOM!

Outside the gun had been loud, in here it was deafening, the roar bouncing back at them from the solid walls.

Swearing came from the floors below.

Logan charged in after Wiktorja, shutting the door behind him, looking for something to jam against it… only he couldn't see a thing. The fairy lights had been switched off, and with the windows all boarded up the place was in utter darkness.

The cheery music boomed out of speakers somewhere deep inside the flat — Katrina & The Waves singing Walking On Sunshine. Not exactly appropriate.

Where the hell were Gorzkiewicz and his bloodthirsty niece?

Junk — there was junk everywhere, they could use that to barricade the door. Logan grabbed whatever was closest to hand and dragged it against the wood. Then had a moment of epiphany. This was stupid — they didn't have enough time to make a barricade out of newspapers and assorted crap. The men would barge straight through and kill them. And Logan didn't want to die in a crappy flat full of rubbish and 1970s wallpaper.

'Gorzkiewicz?' Wiktorja was moving, he could hear her stumbling through the maze of junk. Logan charged after her, tripped over something in the darkness and went sprawling. The gun bounced from his hand and skittered away.

'FUCK!'

He scrabbled forwards on his hands and knees, trying to find the bloody thing.

Wiktorja muttered something in Polish and Logan froze.

'What?'

He could hear the footsteps patter to a halt on the landing outside. The gunmen had caught up with them.

Wiktorja's voice was high-pitched and trembling. 'There is something in here…'

Someone out in the hall started shouting. The only word Logan recognized was 'Ehrlichmann', but the intention was clear enough: come out or we'll kill you. Or more likely, come out and we'll kill you.

No thanks.

He scrambled through a stack of what felt like magazines and fell into the living room.

It wasn't completely dark in here — a faint red glow came from something in the middle of the room. An alarm-clock-radio, the one he'd thought was broken. The one sitting on a big pile of boxes within easy reach of Gorzkiewicz's chair. The one counting down from sixty. That was where the music was coming from.

00:00:58

'Oh fff…'

00:00:57

Wiktorja was standing in front of it, just visible in the red glow, staring with her mouth hanging open.

00:00:56

Bomb. Bomb. BOMB!

Logan grabbed Wiktorja's collar and yanked her backwards. They hit the wall and he fumbled for her handbag.

00:00:54

'What are you doing?'

00:00:53

'Gun! Give me your gun!'

'In my coat pocket… the other one!'

Another heavy chunk of Soviet engineering. At least this time Logan remembered to flick off the safety catch.

00:00:49

He hauled Wiktorja out of the living room and into a pile of something that clattered to the ground. The hallway was still pitch black. The men outside hadn't got past the shouting threats stage, probably working up the courage to charge into a confined space after an armed man.

Logan had a go at dissuading them, putting two rounds through the front door, the shots so loud it was like being smacked around the head. A dim light blossomed beside him. Logan stared at it. 'Why didn't you tell me you had a torch?'

'We have to get out of here!'

'Where did Gorzkiewicz go? He didn't pass us on the stairs…' Logan grabbed the torch.

'Hey!'

He swept it along the hallway. There was a room next to the lounge, the door lying ajar. Logan gave it a shove and it opened onto a tiny bedroom — single bed on one side, coffin-like wardrobe on the other.

'What are we going to do?'

Logan stared at the wardrobe — it was squint, one corner sticking out into the middle of the tiny room. 'In here!'

He stuck the torch between his teeth, the gun in his pocket, and hauled at the wardrobe. It rumbled across the threadbare carpet, exposing a hole in the plasterwork, right through to the brick. And a heavy steel door, covered in weld-marks and rivets.

Logan grabbed the handle and yanked, but the whole thing was solid. Gorzkiewicz had made sure no one would be following him. 'Fuck! Why did we have to break into a bloody bomb-maker's house?' The torch was already beginning to dim as the batteries died.

Out in the hallway he could hear the shouting and swearing getting louder, and then a thunk. A bullet punched through the door, leaving a perfect circle of light behind. A shop mannequin propped up against the wall rocked as half of its chest disappeared in a shower of brittle plastic.

Logan staggered into the kitchen, stumbling through stacks of God-knew-what in the semi-darkness as Katrina & The Waves kept on singing their happy song.

He tried to shake some life back into the dying torch. 'How long?'

Wiktorja: 'Until what?'

'What do you think?'

'Oh…'

He fumbled through the gloom, feeling for the boarded-up kitchen window.

And then there was light: bright and white.

Logan waited for the blast to hit, but it was just the huge, ancient refrigerator. Wiktorja had opened the door.

At least now he could see what he was doing… And that it was bloody hopeless. The window was covered with a thick sheet of plywood, nailed into the surround. He'd need a claw hammer and half an hour to shift it.

They were going to die.

Wiktorja pointed at the fridge. 'In here! We could climb inside and-'

'It's a bloody fridge, not an air-raid shelter! The blast'll rip it to shreds.'

THINK!

'Bathtub!' He grabbed her hand, yanking her back out into the hallway, just in time to see the front door slam open. Three figures were silhouetted against the faint orange glow of the sunset filtering in through the tiny stairwell windows.

Logan dived through the bathroom door, snapping off a single shot as he fell. The muzzle flash was bright enough to sting his eyes, and screw up what little night vision he had. One of the figures clutched at their leg and went down swearing. And then the other two returned fire, the 'futttt' of their silencers barely audible over Logan's tinnitus.

The first shots went high, thunking into the bathroom's back wall, just above the stained porcelain cistern. If Logan had been standing up they would have been just above his bellybutton.

The bathroom wasn't huge, just the toilet, a wooden chair, a pile of towels on the floor, and a collection of grey Y-fronts dripping over a large, old-fashioned enamel bathtub.

'Get in the bath!'

He fired off two more shots in swift succession, the gun kicking, lighting up the bathroom with strobe flashes. Each BOOOM followed by the cling-clink-clink of a shell casing skittering across the linoleum, in perfect time to the music. The harsh smell of cordite.

The silhouettes ducked and Logan struggled to his feet, then slammed his foot into the open bathroom door, forcing it back against its hinges. One more kick and the top one gave way.

A bullet ricocheted off the wall beside his head as Logan grabbed the door's edge and ripped the whole thing free.

'futttt'

He staggered under the weight as something thumped into the wood.

'Logan!'

He clambered into the bath, trying to drag the door on top of them, like a lid. It was a tight squeeze, elbows and knees sticking in uncomfortable places. The two of them a jumble of limbs. The door awkward and heavy.

He could see the men framed in the doorway of the flat, lunging forward into Gorzkiewicz's maze of junk. Logan swore and pulled the door into place.

'What's Polish for "bomb"?'

'What?'

'WHAT'S POLISH FOR "BOMB"?'

Flames.

Blinding light.

Shockwave.